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He is haunted by the Collector. No matter how far he sails, it is as if the Collector is always there, just on the edge of sight, a ghost in in every half glimpsed reflection. He can hear the Collector’s voice, sighing in the wind and crashing surf, telling him what to do like a half remembered dream.
He tries to ignore this. He knows the Collector must be confined to that solitary island, far distant over the waves. There is no space for a secret stowaway on his small boat while he is out here fishing. And yet there is no escape from that cloying presence. Even when they should be far apart, it feels as if the Collector is lurking just over his shoulder, though nowhere to be seen as soon as he turns around.
Fishing should be a solitary pursuit, nothing but long stretches of deep blue ocean and his own thoughts. But the more lost he becomes in his own thoughts, the closer the Collector seems to come. It is as if he can imagine what the Collector would say, voice murmuring in the ear of his memory, the Collector’s words falling from his own lips.
He whispers the words the Collector taught him, dark and strange as they slither over his tongue, and watches as the water swirls black, death crawling through to claim the fish below. It feels like the words leave a residue of grime on his skin, the death they bring wrapping around him with oily pressure. And yet still they climb from his mouth with practiced ease, leaving him spent, a vessel for a power he cannot comprehend.
He pulls the now dead fish from the water, his net heavy yet still with their weight. Among the mundane fish he has caught, one falls, glistening and unnatural, to the deck of his boat. It can be called a fish only in that it is a creature from the ocean, bearing little resemblance to the others by its side. It twitches upon wood still animated with unknowable impulses. It is repulsive and beautiful, its body corrupted into fanciful new form.
Each aberrant fish he has caught has its own unique variation. This one shines. Its skin is translucent yet reflects light at certain angles, by turns showing its crawling innards and the palms of his hands as he draws it in.
But in its skin he also sees the Collector. In pools of still water, in darkened windows, in the worn down facets of gems pulled from the depths of the sea, in the shiny scales of this freshly caught fish, the Collector’s face slips along each surface. There is no place he can escape to that is untainted by the Collector’s presence. He isn’t sure he even wants to escape.
He runs a finger along the fish’s skin, cold and wet. He watches as his face blurs, each touch deforming the surface of the fish in such a way that its mirror image is distorted. He sees himself, weatherworn and rough from years of wind and sun, but the Collector is there as well, their two faces merging until it seems he cannot tell where one begins and the other ends.
As the sun falls below the horizon, so too do his pretensions to an even keeled temperament. His paranoia rises with the gathering night. The setting sun shines red streaks upon the awful mirrored fish, illuminating it in blood. The Collector stares back, smile now rimed in blood.
He shudders, throwing the fish from him in a rush. He looks away as he stows it, attempting to keep it from his view. But it is too late; in its skin the Collector now lurks, laughing face accompanying him on this boat that should be his alone.
He runs so far from shore, yet nowhere is he truly alone. He does not know if this is comfort or curse, but he continues on, the Collector in tow.